


Of Vices And Virtues

by aesterismo



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-22
Updated: 2013-06-22
Packaged: 2017-12-15 19:48:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 3,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/853373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aesterismo/pseuds/aesterismo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's like forgetting the words to your favorite song.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. ingenuity

Simple is best, Eren thinks, when it comes to the smaller things in life.

The smaller things in life make time’s passage easier to bear. Turn the learned associations unlearned. Reflect the things he misses, sometimes, when nights spent in his bunk among the cacophonous symphony of snores and cough-sniggering aren’t the only thing that keeps him awake.

Like a hot meal after a long day’s training, spoonful by spoonful of usually tasteless gruel never so delicious as it’s enjoyed to the very last drop.

Like the distant calls of birds taking flight from the barrack rooftops while he sits down below and watches them scatter in the sunset.

Like the rising laughter of a group of children running past him on the district street, eager shouts and earnest eyes chasing one another like their small footfalls that disappear as quickly as they came.

(Like his hope - perpetual, relentless, indomitable hope - that all his efforts won’t be in vain.)


	2. fidelity

Her loyalty is not a medal of honor nor a prize to be won.

Watching the skies, ever-vigilant. Effortless drill and practice put into practice, an execution as measured as her heart rate turns, leaps, and thenceforth returns to its regular pace. The air itself becomes her weapon, manipulated through movement and elegant maneuvers.

The others view Mikasa as an inhuman creature, unparalleled by the others.

For the sake of her pride, she does not pay any mind to their murmurs and pointed reminders, chooses instead to hide the scars that lie beneath belts and fabric, over sinews and sturdy muscle.

(She is alone, does not have a place to call home, but she is fortunate enough to have a place to return to all the same.

She has been alone for as long as she can recall, no blood relations but fortunate enough to have what, for all intensive purposes, she can call family.

She does not have attachments to anything, material or immaterial, but she has friends, she has Armin, she has _Eren_ \- and, no matter where the winds of fate or fortune may lead them, nothing will change what makes up her world.)


	3. rationality

Comparatively small of build as he is, Armin does not wish to be taller.

He can stand on his own two feet, hold his own, at the height that he is.

He can use his mind over the most inscrutable matter, discern the details behind difficult situations, look at a problem through a subjective lens and find a solution with few objections raised.

His hands nor his wingspan are not anywhere near as large as the other boys but he can hold tome after tome of literature in his arms and his eyesight is more than keen enough to catch sight of impending danger and act accordingly.

He’s grown plenty, he thinks, in the time he’s been a trainee to the time he’s been sworn into the Recon Corps.

Not full grown - but there will be time for that, Armin knows, so long as his will to live remains. Like an ever brilliant flame, inextinguishable.

Like kindness, granted to those who need it to survive, golden sunlight against a backdrop of vermillion, as warm as the hands that help him stand up time and again.

(Like camaraderie, irreplaceable, he would rather die than go without.)


	4. bravery

Years later, when the tall tales of better days they craft in their heads will become history, Jean will tell them he learned how to survive on his own.

(He’s always been, in retrospect, an excellent liar.)

Years in the future, when his palms will not shake over the right-wrong choices made, Jean will tell anyone who asks what the most important factor in his climb to becoming Humanity’s most admirable soldier that it was “luck.”

(As the crowd’s raucous laughter rises and falls, he will think of Marco’s patient smile and half-conscious nighttime musings which always seemed to end - and begin - from _there’s always another day so live each one like it’s your last._ )

Years later, when the strength to his body worn with training and the resilience to his bones fades off, Jean will not regret the chances not taken, the opportunities lying lost in the aftermath of wars never won.

(Because what he’s gained - courage in the face adversity - means more than the fear of dying that teaches one to learn how to live.)


	5. secrecy

The longer Reiner holds onto secrets, the tougher they are to let go.

Human nature, he’s come to realize, follows the same principle.

The more you know, the more you wish you didn’t.

The more time passes, the more you want the minutes passing, the seconds ticked off whittling away at your lifespan, to ceasefire before it brings you down to size.

The more you lose your sense of self in a charade, in a role your avid spectators know you for, the harder it is to stop acting once the curtain’s closed.

And he cannot stop, refuses to let himself stop, any sooner than he can give up the ghost.

For the sake of what he wants most.

For the sake of where he longs to return to, a place where he might at last find closure to the mysteries behind the armor which hides beneath mortal flesh.

(He’s long but forgotten who he was, before the monster he became destroyed everything, but the secret’s - one of of many - safe with him.)


	6. necessity

His height is both a bless and a curse.

Bertholdt likens it to the same reason he lingers at Reiner’s side, the same reason he chose this unchanging plain face while his insides are in constant limbo, shifting, forming and reforming themselves, reminding him of the nature of the cruel world they live in.

A grave reminder, indeed.

He looks down on them, sometimes. Centimeters to grams, dust to dust, he is a presence never overlooked.

How can they, when he stands over them the way he does?

How can they, when he does not transform but morphs into the person they observe him to be, molding to fit the wallflower archetype he’s fooled himself into pretending to be?

How can they, when all he’s ever been associated with is a tower, a pillar of strength, though he feels so far from it he may as well be the tallest hill on the distant horizon, disassociated in relation to all else that unfolds on the ground below?

(But he is held - revered, desired, _needed_ \- in a trembling Reiner’s arms and for now, Bertholdt decides, that will be his one selfish thing, a necessity in theory, that alone will be his reason to exist.)


	7. solitary

No one can love you, so the saying goes, if you cannot find it within you to love yourself.

Annie doesn’t put any faith in that adage.

Place faith in no one, face forward, and never look back. Now there’s a philosophy she can live by.

But no such wise words will be found in the pages of a book or tumbling from the mouths of adulterated adults.

Of course, she does not feel any such connection with her peers, either - but they are, at least, foolhardy enough to offer her a semblance of something like hope.

 _Help me_ , the child who never had the luxury of pastimes, of whimsicality, of a parent’s gentle embrace, cries out, _find a spark that reignites the fire within me._

For a time, she finds ardor in the art of fighting. In the countless forms, the means by which one can knock a man at least thrice her size right on his back, and in what, she supposes, brings people together in a brief dance of diligence and discipline.

(Someday, she dreams, there will be someone who sweeps her off her feet - who loves her not for her beauty or strength but for her fragility - but today is not that day.)


	8. tenacity

The Titans can’t kill what they can’t catch.

For Connie, it’s a rule of thumb. He’s done his time in training, gotten used to what it takes in theory to parry, dodge, and react on the fields.

By the skin of his teeth, he graduates at rank eight among his classmates.

But he does have aspirations for better, now, having joined the Scouting Legion. Working on the front lines, among the ranks of those who are trained to die, he feels right at home. What better way to prove his worth than here?

What better way to face what frightens him most than before the very epitome of dangerous?

(Danger?

He laughs in the face of danger - reckless, ruthless, and raucous.

Let them come, he decides once his knees stop shaking, and he’ll give them a whiff, if not a taste, of what the humans they crave so much can do.)


	9. honesty

Truth, Sasha knows, does not always set a person free.

In every half-truth, there are lies. In every genuine remark, every honest praise, there are unvoiced thoughts, countless rationalizations. Synapses, nerve endings, left to right brain communications.

Contrary to popular belief, Sasha is not a fool.

Cowardly? She can be cowardly, yes.

Disheartened, dishonest, desperate? Those things as well, she won’t deny.

Gluttonous, greedy? Certainly, though even she knows her limits.

Afraid of attachment to others, afraid of giving herself away for the person she wants most to be in front of those who’ve earned her food-sharing approval, afraid of - dare she think it - dying without a sound?

(That, Sasha knows, she will never be afraid of.

Not the dying part, at least.

Because what’s more potent an antidote to hear fear than the thought of dying is the fear of having never once - reuniting with her father again, remembering how delicious a meal as simple as potatoes and meat after a successful expedition, laughing free and easy while nestled safe under the covers of her bottom bunk - truly lived.)


	10. clarity

The past, Ymir thinks, deserves to remain as such.

She decided a long time before she joined the army. No connections, no friendships, nothing to hold her back or regret should karma’s bitchy side decide it’s time for her to go.

When it’s her time to go, Ymir resolves herself to it, vows on the breath of a not-quite prayer, she’ll go none too quietly.

(But no one needs to waste their time or their tears. Not on someone like her. Least of all on someone like her.)

But Christa— no, _Historia_. If there’s anyone who defies expectations, shatteres her old beliefs, and brings her the kind of inner peace she shared bitter laughter over with the street rats she used to run with, it’s her.

A girl who wrinkles her nose at her crassness but clutches her arm during training to keep herself steady.

A girl who gives and gives at even the most undeserving of the lot, a martyr in angel’s garb, smiling when the crumbling mask behind such an expression reveals she’s ready to cry.

(A girl who, for better or for worse, trusted Ymir with her life - and for whom, on the breath of a not-quite prayer before she falls off that tower, Ymir was more than ready to do the same.)


	11. identity

Names are a curious thing.

Christa knows the magic of them, the power of them, from first hand experience.

What they call you defines you; what they refer to you as in passing and in your presence are burdens worth carrying, because they shape you as an individual.

In a world where survival is everything, alongside comrades she calls friends, Christa learns that it is not gentleness that commands strength, that garners respect in the end.

She is far from the strongest - ranked tenth in the graduating trainee squad members - but her legs are strong enough to carry her to whatever lands, whatever new destinations, she may seek.

She is far from the fastest — though her tongue runs quick and her many voices, wise and childish alike — but she’ll walk forward with her head held high and stand as Humanity’s last defense against the Titans, as she resolved to as soon as she left her former life behind.

(Historia Reiss is not the person she wants to be, but it’s a foundation if nothing else, a second chance that Ymir - the free-spirited light in the dark, the familiar warmth laid against her back on the coldest of nights, who she allowed past her defenses that rivaled the still standing Wall Sina - gave to her that day that she’ll make into something bigger and better than ever before.)


	12. curiosity

When they tell Hanji _you can’t_ , Hanji whirls around to toss them a tireless grin and says _watch me_.

In another time, in another place, Hanji would no doubt have still been a scientist - in spirit or by trade.  A job title as a soldier looks good on the records but Hanji's true passion, what gets the blood pumping going and what unfurls one's reservations, is finding real answers to real questions.

If nothing else, it gives Hanji the opportunity to pursue any number of curiosities. Along with the many, many more that accompany new discoveries, of course.

Hanji’s glad to be here. Complacency can be a double-edged sword, but Hanji lives for established things, for a routine to rely on.

Like the same faces who stick around, no matter how troubling the times may fester (like Sonny and Bean, if left all by their lonesome, because Hanji’s sure Titans have more to them than just receptors and base desires, without a doubt!) and turn out to be.

Like the same promise that gets Hanji through another day, another budget cut, another backhanded compliment to what their legion stands for (the way they talk down to the Special Ops scouts, the way they trample on Levi’s silence— Hanji hates it, hates those government dogs’ and their sneers and their snark more than anything else, but the hand on Hanji's arm that clutches so tightly it leaves a worse mark than tightly fastened gear on their worst expeditions and, for their commander and their corporal’s sake, Hanji stays silent) and continues to stand for even now.

Like the places and people Hanji knows (known) will not let down the Legion yet - who, for the record, Hanji has no intention of leaving behind: not now, not ever.


	13. audacity

Pain is not an unfamiliar thing to Levi.

The battering bruises, the countless cuts, the laced lacerations over wearisome welts? No way in hell he’d let that any of that get to him, let alone keep him down on the ground.

The Scouting Legion’s insignia is a set of wings for any number of reasons - but this isn’t one of them.

He’s no bird, that’s for sure. Birds flee when they’re thrust into harm’s way, take to the skies as soon as they get the chance, take their meals into beak at the same time as they’re taking a shit.

No, Levi doesn’t feel any sense of kinship in those feathered creatures nor does he stake claim to knowing who it was to create three-dimensional gear in the first place.

But when he has a titan on the run, soars through the air in a perfect arc, and lands a clean cut right at the base of its neck - as only one trained to kill could do?

When he has a good word put in for the Recon Corps’ progress, despite their many setbacks, and passes by Erwin - who pats him on the shoulder, a firm but gentle clasp, like he had five years ago when the older man appeared in that alleyway and offered him a new name, a new profession, a new _life_ \- before they leave the dark enclave of that bureaucratic stronghold together?

When he has the cause to combat these ugly cretins, the camaraderie that refuses to fail him, the set of new scouts who inspire the kind of courage in the older scouts that crests and collects at the center of his chest and forces him to fight back a wan smile - the first in years?

(What the wings represent, what the end of this godforsaken story of theirs will look like?

Levi could care less about any of those things.

What Humanity’s strongest soldier cares about, now and always, will be the people who’ve guided him into the clouds thus far - and who, now and always, won’t let him down.)


	14. sympathy

Erwin keeps a drawer full of his moments of weakness and sentimentality stored in a corner of his heart.

It’s under lock and key at all times, so no one other than him are allowed to see inside it. Naturally, as they’re secrets kept by him, for him, alone.

Memories related stay where they belong: far back in the recesses of his mind, reserved for sleepless nights where old regrets and new wounds get the better of him.

And his self-control, really, is something to be admired.

(He swore since the day of that expedition, the one that should have never been, he wouldn’t open that veritable chest unless he was alone.)

But when he sees a boy - a teenager, by society’s standards, but from his experience, nothing speaks volumes more than a technicality than the look in someone’s eyes upon first meeting - who sidles through the shadows of back streets and pillage from the lesser wary and who, after Erwin sends him flying back-first to the pavement, accepts the hand offered to him and lets the taller man take him in, all Erwin’s reservations hits the ground as swiftly as _Levi, then, if you say any name is fine, as I imagine it'll be easy enough to write_ his charge’s new identity is forged.

When he sees in front of the mirror - a man whose tired eyes have seen too much; whose open palms haven’t contracted a visible quake but, from the way the rest of his body aches more than ever these days, soon enough will; a man who does not stake any claim to being stronger than the rest, far from it, and feels the anchor of a title like _commander_ all too much at times like these - that the person in his reflection is not who he remembers from when he first started out as a soldier, Erwin discovers he has no regrets left.

When he sees upon his first visit to the Recon Corps’ new headquarters, a base in name and now in establishment, in the light behind their new recruits’ eyes not at all extinguished at the new challenges posed but, in fact, all the brighter burning at the commander’s plan to return their captured comrades to where they belong, Erwin is reminded of what drives him, what keeps his convictions strong, what keeps _him_ strong every time his doubts threaten to resurface and turn his sympathy into self-pity.

(Erwin is a commander, a leader, from the time he rose to this rank to the day he dies, and his sympathy will be what holds humanity wound tight to his dedication to bring his troops to victory - come Titan storms or higher walls to scale - so they can all be able to return home, this time with pride.)


	15. piety

Before they leave for every expedition beyond the walls, there’s a certain ritual - a good luck charm, if you will - that Petra insists on.

It makes close to no sense at all, Levi grouses each and every time, as they don’t always do what they claim to do. But he gathers everyone around in a circle, anyway, for all his complaints.

That day, like always, they share a few more jokes before the mood turns rightfully solemn.

_When this is over,_

_we’ll drink our worries away_

_and carry on home._

The same chant, the same poetry, the same song and dance. Sometimes literally, if Gunter and Auruo aren’t stopped in mid-verse and Hanji doesn’t get pulled back by the collar.

If nothing else, it counts as a formality before active duty, Erd chuckles a bit despite himself, so they can keep on working as the Special Operations Squad in the future .

So they join Eren in the impromptu ceremony, bump into each other and rustle one another’s hair. Link arms in their playful jaunt toward the stables, like they’re about to head off for a party or some equally enjoyable social gathering. Laugh, laugh, and laugh like they do each and every time as they leave the castle tucked away on the hills for the edge of the Wall as a way to stave off their anxiousness and even garner a few derisive snorts out of Levi, though only Eren seems to find that much amusing.

It counts, in retrospect, as one of those unforgettable moments in time, deemed precious and foretelling.

(It counts, years upon years later, as a story Levi will tell to anyone who cares to listen, as the last time he saw his comrades smiling.)


	16. unity

Waiting is a bit like wanting.

They do not know where the road ends, where the winding path leads.

Questions unasked are questions without answers - but answers do not hold the weight of the world on their shoulders.

They do, however, which is precisely why they do not speak of _to what end_ any sooner than they do of _who will be next_.

But even so. Even so, there are those who remain - and they are the ones who will not depart into that dark night silent any sooner than they’ll turn back to where they’ve been.

There’s a certain solidarity that comes with the knowledge that death holds no qualms about whose family came from which continent or who deserves more time to say goodbye.

There’s a certain peace of mind that emerges from the knowledge that a battle cry impromptu but reverberating holds more meaning when everyone hears it, returns it, before they all march forward and embark on their 3MDG-driven flight over the titan-laden grounds

There’s a force of nature, a force which does not share a common voice or purpose but, tumultuous all the same, charges on to the heralded rebellion of Humanity’s last stand against all who oppose its collective determination.

(Because the fist pressed to their still-beating hearts means something - it always has - and the tenacity of young people these days is nothing less than incredible.)


End file.
